Peru

Well, I just got to Cajamarca, Peru a week ago after leaving Costa Rica. I am staying here for a month, trying to learn spanish and do my best to photograph this incredibly beautiful region located in the Northern Highlands region of Peru. I dont think its a region that receives a lot of attention as it is a 16 hour bus ride from Lima, where you enter the country. And probably 20+ hours from Machu Picchu, the place most people come to visit. There is an interesting mix of people, from the traditional campesiono's that live in the villages and farm but come into the city to sale their goods, to the young, progressive crowd of 20 somethings embracing more of a metropolitian lifestyle. Either way, the city of Cajamarca and its surroundings are full of culture and life.

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of days. They are somewheat surface level, as not speaking the language well, makes it difficult to really immerse yourself in a situation. Its a lot easier to explain why you are there and what your purpose is when you speak the same language as the people you are trying to photograph. Enjoy, and expect more to come.

A New Semester

Im sure its been so long since my last update that most of you stopped looking at my blog altogether, but im back at posting again now that im actually shooting again. Last semester i spent so much time looking at other peoples photography and devoting most of my time to being photo editor of the Herald that it didnt leave much, if any time to shoot. But one thing it absolutley did was make me wish i had the time to just go shoot. Not for class or anthing else but just for myself. And now that i have that time, and hopefully some more knowledge, im gonna shoot.

This first image is from the recent storms that passed through Ky and left thousands without power. To see more pictures and listen to some great audio go to www.chherald.com and please, PLEASE, check back here for more pictures to come.

Kohl

Tough Decisions

If you paid attention to the news at the right time last Wednesday, you might have noticed for a brief moment that there was a shooting at WKU. Reports of armed gunmen and shots fired were flying around the national media. This sent our campus into chaos and frenzy as swat teams and media crews converged at Western. For a long while we all believed there were gunmen on campus, thankfully it turned out to be somewhat of a false alarm. It was finally sorted out and believed to be a fight between 20 or so people that happened at 2 locations, and although several people came forward claiming to have seen/ heard gunshots, none were confirmed. Although the national media soon found that it wasnt jucy enough for the, it was still big news for our campus because of some of the events that happened while our school was on lockdown. The most significant being several students were detained at gunpoint in what could be described as overkill. When one girl said to a cop while he arrested her friend "You cant do that" he said, "If you want to be a part of this, ill make you part of this, and threw her on the ground" Thats our front page photo. It was a difficult decision after considering all of the great images, but the above layouts is how it ran in our paper. We chose the photo for the front because it best illustrated that confusion and chaos of the day. It also portrayed an event that hardly anyone on campus witnessed, and we felt was important. Overall our photographers did a great job and got the most story telling images possible. It was great practice for me as well because i found out just how stressful this job can be, but also how rewarding. And no one had to get shot.

Finally got to shoot a picture

This semester i have taken the job as photo editor for WKU's paper, the College Heights Herald. It all happened last minute, but has so far been an awesome experience. I have already learned stuff that i didn't expect to learn. Just the nature of editing hundreds of images a week is bound to help your photography in the long run, i hope. I will say one thing, spending all of my time watching my staff take great pictures, and not having the time to take any myself, has made me more eager than ever to pick up my camera. I did find some time this past saturday to shoot a feature at the football game Western played against Murray state.

I saw this group of young kids hanging outside of the rest of the crowd as everyone else passed by. They were so preoccupied with texting on their phones, that im not sure they knew there was a game going on. They were nice kids though.

Check out what were doing online at the Herald.

Young Bird, Old Hands

Where'd I park my horse?

This image is from a horse jumping competition. The interesting thing was that one of the courses was set up on top of a parking garage. Where else would you put all the horses but on the lower levels. I wonder if anyone forgot where they parked their horse.

First few weeks

Here are some images from my first few weeks at the Knoxville News Sentinel, as well as one from a friends wedding i shot in Nashville. I'm gonna post a bunch of images, so i don't blame you if you only look at the first few and then get bored. I might. Please give me some feedback if you feel like it.

I hope that everyone else out there doing internships is doing awesome. Good luck this summer.


These first two are from a Llama sanctuary that i visited today on an assignment. Of course the assignment was scheduled to go at the same time as the reporter as opposed to by myself when something interesting was happening. I was pretty happy with what i got considering the circumstances, but not satisfied enough. So, i got it approved to go back tomorrow and thursday when they are going to try and catch a wild Llama and bring another to the sanctuary. They were a pretty awesome family and im hoping to get some good images as well as audio from it.

Again with the scheduling. When i read the assignment it said that at 1:30 these kids from this science camp would be presenting the projects they had worked on all week to their parents. It didnt sound to visual so i showed up an hour and a half early to try and photograph them actually working on their projects. I'm glad i did because the presentation i was supposed to photograph consisted of a bunch of people sitting in a gym. Im finally getting the hang of how these assignments work. At my last internship the scheduling was done differently, so it took some figuring out.

Just a simple feature to run with a story about the public library, they never ran the story. Oh well.

Bridal dresses style shoot. Its funny because the location that we shot this at was probably the tackies wedding place i have ever seen. It looked like a glorified funeral home. So four out of the seven shots were done in an abandoned, overgrown lot next to the location.

Jenny putting on makeup getting ready for the big moment. An amazing couple and the wedding was a joy to photograph. I had a blast guys, thanks.